NSW gov intervenes to keep kids out of jail

Updated
February 27, 2013 14:05:00

The New South Wales Government has launched an early intervention program to help keep children between 10 and 14 out of the prison system. The 10 million dollar program aims to help young people with drug and alcohol support, violence and mental health issues and learning difficulties.

ELEANOR HALL: The New South Wales Attorney General says juvenile prisons are "Universities of Crime", and he's responded by launching an early intervention program aimed at keeping children out of jail.

The program focuses on young people aged between 10 and 14 who have had three cautions from the police, as Jennifer Macey reports.

JENNIFER MACEY: In New South Wales there are about 5,000 children held in the juvenile justice system each year. The Attorney General, Greg Smith, says detention acts as a corrupting influence on these children, many of whom go on to re-offend.

So he's launched a new program called Youth on Track, which is designed to intervene before a child ends up in jail.

GREG SMITH: We'll be doing our best to turn these young people around before they fall into a life of crime. We're trying to get young people before they start committing criminal offences, before they start going off the track.

JENNIFER MACEY: He says in the first year the program is expected to deal with 300 young people who have already been in contact with the police three times. After six months, schools can refer students to the Youth on Track program.

Greg Smith says the children will be assigned a case manager and helped with a range of issues.

GREG SMITH: Well, we'll be using case managers to help them and work out where they need some help, if they need help with drug and alcohol problems, we'll send them there. If they need help with literacy and numeracy, we'll send them there. If their parents need help in a struggling household situation, then we'll help. We'll do all these things to help turn them around.

JENNIFER MACEY: And he says it's a first for Australia.

GREG SMITH: It's something that hasn't been done in this country before and we're very eager to get it going because this is a much better way of dealing with the crime problem.

JENNIFER MACEY: The Government has put $10 million a year over four years towards the scheme. The program will initially be rolled in the Hunter Valley, Western Sydney and the mid New South Wales North Coast.

Criminologist, Professor Chris Cunneen, is at the Cairns Institute and school of law at James Cook University. He welcomes the early intervention program.

CHRIS CUNNEEN: I think most of the budgetry allocations certainly go into the hard end of the system, which is really detention centres. And by that stage young people are often well entrenched in the criminal justice system and it's far more difficult to make changes.

I think you know the benefit of a program like this is that it really attempts to assist young people in that age group between 10 and 14, because we know with that group, if they do go on to offend they're more likely to become entrenched in the system, they're more likely to go into detention. And once they've been in juvenile detention then they're also quite likely to end up in an adult prison.

JENNIFER MACEY: Eileen Baldry is a professor of criminology at the school of social science at the University of New South Wales. She says although it's a pilot program, $10 million over four years isn't enough.

EILEEN BALDRY: It's the case that police are often left as the care managers for these young people like this who have histories of abuse and cognitive impairment and unstable housing and mental health concerns. I do think that it would be very helpful to ensure that it's connected to or that there are also programs that are addressing young people even earlier so they don't get to the point where the police are picking them up all the time.

JENNIFER MACEY: This is only for people who have been cautioned by the police. What about those juveniles who have already committed petty crimes? Because they're excluded from this program.

EILEEN BALDRY: Yeah they are. What I would hope is that as they trial this program and hopefully as it proves to be somewhat successful, that it will open up to those young people who have already moved further down that track.

Because it's quite clear that there can be support and programs and interventions at many points along somebody's lifetime that can be very supportive and that can give them the kind of circuit breaker or way out of the enmeshment with the criminal justice system that quite a lot of these young people end up with by the time they're 14, 15.

JENNIFER MACEY: The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research will evaluate the program before it's extended to other parts of the state.